An Eventful Year with Many Changes
It’s been an eventful year for me and I thought an update was in order. On the work front there have been a lot of changes. I joined Juniper Networks in November. I’m focused on technical marketing for data center and cloud. This is a return for me as I was at Juniper before moving to Cisco in 2007. It’s interesting how the world turns, and I’m excited to be back.
When I was interviewing at Juniper I was asked what attracted me to the jobs that I had. Of course there are many things, but being a techie what stands out for me is working on market leading products and I’ve been fortunate to have worked on some firsts. At Lucent it was the Portmaster (formerly Livingston), the first digital remote access server. At Redback it was the SMS (Subscriber Management System), the first broadband aggregation platform. At Entone it was a suite of products for IPTV that preceded FIOS and UVerse. When I first went to Juniper in 2005 it was the Peribit WX, the first WAN Optimization devices. At Cisco I got into cloud computing and marketed data center solutions including virtualized network services that ran on the UCS compute platform. At VCE I marketing the first pre-engineered converged infrastructure platform for private cloud computing.
So the question is what brought me to Juniper? Working at a company that continues to innovate in the networking space was a big draw. The opportunity to be on a newly formed team that is focused on critical areas of the network and to be the lead for data center and cloud computing was important. My role in technical marketing is to bridge the gap between the capabilities of the networking equipment and the value delivered to the business in terms of application performance and availability. I believe that the network design is critical to delivering a superior user experience and enabling applications architected for the cloud. As I looked at how applications are becoming more complex and more highly distributed I saw how Juniper’s innovative QFabric switching platform was ideally suited to meet the requirements of this trend in application architecture. So the short answer is the opportunity to market data center solutions based on QFabric.
Here are a few areas of interest that I expect to be writing about in the coming months.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Leveraging Converged Infrastructure To Deliver Microsoft Exchange 2010
The Critical Communications Tool
While we hear a lot about new communications technologies for most of us email is the tool that we use everyday. For end users email is still the most efficient way to communicate globally but for the IT department email can be a difficult application to deploy and manage. Guaranteeing performance and availability for an increasingly mobile workforce, while keeping costs in check is a challenge. Organizations are challenged with the time required to manage email delivery systems. Time is spent on installation and configuration of software and the supporting infrastructure. Much of an organization staff can be consumed by routine tasks driving up the cost of ownership. It can be difficult to determine what infrastructure is required to scale up as the number of users increases. As email becomes more feature rich supporting large numbers of power users creates increasing demands on the systems. Organizations want predictable operation and support for their entire solution. They want to be sure that they are maximizing system resource utilization and eliminating server underutilization while delivering a superior user experience.
Making the Move to Exchange 2010
With Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft has made significant changes in the architecture to address the growing need of businesses to increase mailbox quotas, drive down storage and IT costs, provide a high degree of availability, meet regulatory requirements for data retention and compliance, and enhance the productivity. To take advantage of the new HA, DR and archiving functionalities, IT organizations may have to look at a new platform, and re-architect the Exchange environment. Changes in how storage is managed creates the incentive to change the storage infrastructure. The new database availability group (DAG) functionality requires Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, requiring an upgrade to 64-bit server hardware. The Single Instance Storage (SIS) feature that reduced redundancy by storing only a single copy of an email or attachment has been eliminated increasing storage requirements.
While we hear a lot about new communications technologies for most of us email is the tool that we use everyday. For end users email is still the most efficient way to communicate globally but for the IT department email can be a difficult application to deploy and manage. Guaranteeing performance and availability for an increasingly mobile workforce, while keeping costs in check is a challenge. Organizations are challenged with the time required to manage email delivery systems. Time is spent on installation and configuration of software and the supporting infrastructure. Much of an organization staff can be consumed by routine tasks driving up the cost of ownership. It can be difficult to determine what infrastructure is required to scale up as the number of users increases. As email becomes more feature rich supporting large numbers of power users creates increasing demands on the systems. Organizations want predictable operation and support for their entire solution. They want to be sure that they are maximizing system resource utilization and eliminating server underutilization while delivering a superior user experience.
Making the Move to Exchange 2010
With Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft has made significant changes in the architecture to address the growing need of businesses to increase mailbox quotas, drive down storage and IT costs, provide a high degree of availability, meet regulatory requirements for data retention and compliance, and enhance the productivity. To take advantage of the new HA, DR and archiving functionalities, IT organizations may have to look at a new platform, and re-architect the Exchange environment. Changes in how storage is managed creates the incentive to change the storage infrastructure. The new database availability group (DAG) functionality requires Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, requiring an upgrade to 64-bit server hardware. The Single Instance Storage (SIS) feature that reduced redundancy by storing only a single copy of an email or attachment has been eliminated increasing storage requirements.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The VCE Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform
Organizations face increasing costs and security concerns created by the quantity and diversity of devices accessing the network, but they must still respond to the growing needs of the business. Now organizations can rapidly deploy a more secure, cost effective and flexible desktop environment using the Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform. See this video to learn how the you can deploy virtual desktops faster.
The Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform is a purpose-built solution that helps IT organizations to automate desktop and application management by enabling rapid deployment, reducing costs and improving security through centralization of the desktop environment.
Backstory: I wrote the script for this video and worked with the producer to get it completed. It was done for the launch of the FastPath solution for which I was the marketing manager.
The Vblock FastPath Desktop Virtualization Platform is a purpose-built solution that helps IT organizations to automate desktop and application management by enabling rapid deployment, reducing costs and improving security through centralization of the desktop environment.
Backstory: I wrote the script for this video and worked with the producer to get it completed. It was done for the launch of the FastPath solution for which I was the marketing manager.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Solving The Desktop Virtualization Challenge With Vblock FastPath
The Desktop Challenge
The traditional workplace experience used to be working at the office on a PC. Now, the workplace could be the office, the home, or any public location. Now we have more than PC's. Work tools also include tablets and smart phones. Network users could be anywhere, on any kind of device, and they'll need access to all forms of rich media like real time interactive video as well as voice. As a result of these changes organizations are faced with growing security concerns around access to applications and control over corporate data.
Virtualization has been used extensively over the last decade to consolidate servers, improve resource utilization, reduce power consumption, lower costs, and streamline server management. Many of the same issues around cost, complexity, and energy efficiency impact desktop users and IT administrators. Conventional desktop computing approaches are evolving to address an increasing number of regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA. We all know that data breeches are a major concern for corporations. Organizations are trying to protect data, and to simplify desktop management , while meeting the needs of users who demand greater mobility, more devices, and increased flexibility.
As a result of these challenges with desktop management organizations are looking for ways to deploy a more secure, cost effective and flexible desktop environment using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. With VDI organizations can centrally manage desktop images, ensuring a uniform experience for users no matter what platform they are using or where they are locates. With VDI company wide security posture is improved by keeping critical information in the corporate data center, not on the PC. Costs are reduced through centralized desktop management.
The traditional workplace experience used to be working at the office on a PC. Now, the workplace could be the office, the home, or any public location. Now we have more than PC's. Work tools also include tablets and smart phones. Network users could be anywhere, on any kind of device, and they'll need access to all forms of rich media like real time interactive video as well as voice. As a result of these changes organizations are faced with growing security concerns around access to applications and control over corporate data.
Virtualization has been used extensively over the last decade to consolidate servers, improve resource utilization, reduce power consumption, lower costs, and streamline server management. Many of the same issues around cost, complexity, and energy efficiency impact desktop users and IT administrators. Conventional desktop computing approaches are evolving to address an increasing number of regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA. We all know that data breeches are a major concern for corporations. Organizations are trying to protect data, and to simplify desktop management , while meeting the needs of users who demand greater mobility, more devices, and increased flexibility.
As a result of these challenges with desktop management organizations are looking for ways to deploy a more secure, cost effective and flexible desktop environment using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. With VDI organizations can centrally manage desktop images, ensuring a uniform experience for users no matter what platform they are using or where they are locates. With VDI company wide security posture is improved by keeping critical information in the corporate data center, not on the PC. Costs are reduced through centralized desktop management.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Vblock Trusted Multi-Tenancy Model for Cloud Services
Cloud computing offers many economic and environmental advantages to service providers. The ability to deliver infrastructure services to multiple internal or external consumers is a core component of cloud computing. With shared virtual converged infrastructure and best-of-class network, compute, storage, virtualization, and security technologies from Cisco, EMC,and VMware, the Vblock platform presents new opportunities for service providers to deliver secure dedicated services to multiple tenants. In this video you will learn how Vblock Trusted Multi-Tenancy (TMT) from VCE enables service providers to address the key concerns of tenants in the multi-tenant environment – confidentiality, security, compliance, service levels, availability, data protection, and management control.
Backstory: I wrote the script for this Flash video and worked with the producer to get it created.
Backstory: I wrote the script for this Flash video and worked with the producer to get it created.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Vblock: Accelerating the Journey to Private Cloud
In the continuing quest for a fully virtualized data center, IT professionals have a new tool that promises to dramatically simplify the journey: the Vblock. This 60-minute TechWiseTV episode explores this latest advancement in unified computing and shows how it will make it easier for organizations to build out data centers.
You will learn how Vblock™ Infrastructure Platforms simplify the acquisition and deployment process by integrating best of breed technology from Cisco, EMC and VMware into prepackaged units of infrastructure that are optimized for a wide range of virtualized solution deployments and how since each Vblock is pre-built and ready for deployment and the modular design is highly scalable to meet growth needs, your projects will get completed faster and you will have investment protection, and lower total cost of ownership.
Backstory: This video was created by TechWiseTV, a team at Cisco and features my collegues from VCE. I used social media including the Cisco Data Center blog, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook to promote it and increase the views many fold. While at Cisco I created the Cisco Cloud Facebook page and managed the Cisco Cloud Linkedin Group. This also appeared on the Cisco Data Center blog site.
You will learn how Vblock™ Infrastructure Platforms simplify the acquisition and deployment process by integrating best of breed technology from Cisco, EMC and VMware into prepackaged units of infrastructure that are optimized for a wide range of virtualized solution deployments and how since each Vblock is pre-built and ready for deployment and the modular design is highly scalable to meet growth needs, your projects will get completed faster and you will have investment protection, and lower total cost of ownership.
Backstory: This video was created by TechWiseTV, a team at Cisco and features my collegues from VCE. I used social media including the Cisco Data Center blog, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook to promote it and increase the views many fold. While at Cisco I created the Cisco Cloud Facebook page and managed the Cisco Cloud Linkedin Group. This also appeared on the Cisco Data Center blog site.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Are Cloud Service Models Created Equal - Which One is Right for You?
Trouble Raises Concerns
Organizations are utilizing the cloud in growing numbers, but given the news a few months back about cloud outages, first with Amazon AWS, then Google Blogger and GMail and finally Microsoft BPOS, some organizations are rethinking their strategy and trying to decide how to choose a cloud service model that works best for them. See this article in the NYT for example - Amazon’s Trouble Raises Cloud Computing Doubts.
Even with the outages there is no doubt that the Cloud works for many use cases, however not all cloud is the same. There are different considerations for different applications and choosing the right cloud model is critical to the business. If you are thinking about which cloud model is right for you there are a few things to consider. The primary consideration is whether to go with public or private cloud.
When to use the Public Cloud
With public cloud compute resources are shared and they are accessed over the internet at best effort. When choosing to get services from the public cloud you would consider if regulations concerning data protection will allow it, and if it fits with your corporate goals for availability and recovery. This last concern might be the key deciding factor in cloud service adoption.
Any business that is looking to outsource their IT infrastructure to the cloud must consider the whole of their business before taking the plunge. There is a benefit in having access to resources that are elastic and available on demand. The public cloud can work well for batch work, seasonal, periodic, one-time and some public facing uses cases.
Organizations are utilizing the cloud in growing numbers, but given the news a few months back about cloud outages, first with Amazon AWS, then Google Blogger and GMail and finally Microsoft BPOS, some organizations are rethinking their strategy and trying to decide how to choose a cloud service model that works best for them. See this article in the NYT for example - Amazon’s Trouble Raises Cloud Computing Doubts.
Even with the outages there is no doubt that the Cloud works for many use cases, however not all cloud is the same. There are different considerations for different applications and choosing the right cloud model is critical to the business. If you are thinking about which cloud model is right for you there are a few things to consider. The primary consideration is whether to go with public or private cloud.
When to use the Public Cloud
With public cloud compute resources are shared and they are accessed over the internet at best effort. When choosing to get services from the public cloud you would consider if regulations concerning data protection will allow it, and if it fits with your corporate goals for availability and recovery. This last concern might be the key deciding factor in cloud service adoption.
Any business that is looking to outsource their IT infrastructure to the cloud must consider the whole of their business before taking the plunge. There is a benefit in having access to resources that are elastic and available on demand. The public cloud can work well for batch work, seasonal, periodic, one-time and some public facing uses cases.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
